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French hotel chain Sofitel will now offer the daily press to its guests through an iPad application, "in a move that could mean a fresh start for the dwindling tradition of the morning newspaper in hotels," The Independent revealed today.

The newspaper service, called "The Kiosk," provides a selection of six publications per country. For now, there will be media from France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Italy and the United States, the company announced in a press release.For more on this story please see our sister publication www.sfnblog.com

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U.S. newspapers will completely change they way they report circulation beginning October 1, following changes to circulation rules made by the Audit Bureau of Circulations' board, Editor & Publisher reported.

The changes include newspapers now being able to count one subscribers multiple times; for example, a subscriber may be counted once for his print subscription, once for his e-reader subscription, and so on. This also includes online, mobile and other subscriptions. Another major change is that newspapers may include "branded editions" (products published under a different name, such as a commuter daily) in their total average circulation. "The board's aim is to establish a foundation for the future as more newspapers move to bundled print/digital subscription offers and hybrid publishing plans," the ABC board announced in a press release.

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The National Readership Survey (NRS), which provides UK publishers with detailed readership estimates, has announced plans to broaden its results by merging internet-derived estimates with the traditional print survey. Research specialist RSMB and UKOM/Nielsen have been appointed to do a test-run of the fusion.

Considering recent speculation and conflicting statistics on whether the internet is priming to replace print, and in any event how to make online journalism profitable, the increased reach of the NRS is certainly an interesting development. When asked if the merge was based on the above speculations, Mike Ironside, NRS Chief Executive answered in the negative. "No," he told Editors Weblog, describing it as "an initiative to learn the combined real value of online and offline media campaigns."

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Cardiff school of Journalism research fellow Andy Williamshas written a highly critical piece on Trinity Mirror, in light of its management of two national Welsh papers, the North Wales' Daily Post and South Wales' Western Mail, which he describes as in "serious (some suggest terminal) decline." He argues that Trinity Mirror is more concerned with generating profits for shareholders than providing high-quality news.

He asserts that both newspapers have lost large amounts of readers, and comments that "Trinity seems to display little concern that readers are abandoning its titles in droves" and that "the effect falling circulations have on the quality of the Welsh democratic debating chamber could not be further from their minds."

However, profits at Media Wales, TM's subsidiary that owns the Western Mail along with other more local titles, have been consistently high, according to Williams. He claims that these have been generated by cutting staff (by 41% in the last decade) and offering those who remain "extremely low" pay.

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Following reports over the weekend that the Times had lost 66% of its online traffic since introducing compulsory registration and a paywall in recent weeks, the Guardian has now reported that the Times lost almost 90% of its online readership compared to February. This is the figure that was previously predicted by Sunday Times editor John Witherow, and is, according to the Guardian, "the standard experience when a site moves to a paid-access model instead of free access."

The Guardian's calculations are based on data from Experian Hitwise (as was the 66% figure) that shows how many people have attempted to access the site and how many people register to reach the home page. Taking into account figures provided by Dan Sabbagh, Beehive City blogger and former Times media correspondent, the Guardian concludes that the total number of daily visitors to the Times' site has fallen by about 84% since May.

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"Do we have an excess of daily press journalists? And, if so, how does the surfeit vary from country to country?"

Frédéric Filloux is a French journalist, academic and editor of a newsletter about business models of media and technology (full disclosure: Monsieur Filloux has in the past spoken at conferences held by WAN, which also owns EditorsWeblog). In a report released earlier this week on MondayNote.com, Filloux has performed statistical analysis of data contained in the recent OECD report, "The Evolution of News and the Internet". In his analysis, he looks at the relationship between the number of active journalists in a given country and the gross circulation of newspapers in that country during the same time period.

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"The death of the newspaper" is not imminent, according to a recent study by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development that looked at the effect of the Internet on the news industry. 'The Evolution of News and the Internet' aims to assist OECD governments as they consider what sort of support to offer their newspaper industries, and "to provide a platform for further exchange on immediate and longer-term policy development." It provides readership, circulation and other statistics and looks closely at the effects of the Internet on news publishers, debating whether the Internet poses more of an opportunity or a challenge for news organisations.

"The report raises some tough questions on how to safeguard high-quality journalism, which policy initiatives focused on 'salvaging' traditional newspapers, will fail to address. For policy-makers the only real concern should be how to preserve independent news production, regardless through which medium. For businesses, it is about finding the right business models. But we still have a long way to go concerning both these imperatives," Sacha Wunsch-Vincent, senior economist and author of the OECD report, told the Editors Weblog.

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According to a recent survey, there are now more Facebook users in the Arab world than newspaper readers. Spot On Public Relations found that there were more than 15 million Facebook account holders in the Middle East and North Africa region, while the total number of newspaper copies sold in the region in Arabic, English and French is just under 14 million.

Facebook's decision to add an Arabic interface in March 2009 has opened up access to many more people, said Spot On PR's managing director Carrington Malin in a summary of the report. 3.5 million Arabic users have joined over the past year, including 1.1 million in both Egypt and Saudi Arabia. 50% of users in the region still use English as their primary language, however. The top five Facebook markets in MENA - Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Tunisia, account for 70% of all users in the region. The region has a greater proportion of male users than other areas of the world: 37% of MENA users are female, compared to 56% in the US, for example.

Editors Weblog

The World Editors Forum is the organization within the World Association of Newspapers devoted to newspaper editors worldwide. The Editors Weblog (www.editorsweblog.org), launched in January 2004, is a WEF initiative designed to facilitate the diffusion of information relevant to newspapers and their editors.